Newt Gingrich has come under fire recently for his statement that Barack Obama is the "Food Stamp President." In response to Gingrich, the left makes three claims:

1. Racist!
2. It's Bush's fault
3. Well yes, but the population has increased too so Obama can't be blamed.

It is this last claim that I wanted to take a look at and see if population growth could account for the increase of people on food stamps.

The U.S. civilian population estimate on the first day of *FY2010 was 307,518,237. SNAP participation for FY2010 was 40,302,000. The percentage of people on food stamps was 13%.

The U.S. civilian population on the last day of FY2011 was 310,800,403. FY2011 saw  44,709,000 people receiving SNAP benefits. This represents 14.3% of the population. So while the population did increase, so did the percentage of people on food stamps!

There's more.

The population increased by 1% during this time. However, food stamp participation increased by almost 11%! Increases in the population does not account for the increase in food stamp usage.

Lastly, the stimulus changed the SNAP program. First, it increased funding by almost $20 billion by increasing monthlybenefit levels. It also changed the amount of time that an able-bodied adults without dependents. The restrictions placed on benefits by the Food and Nutrition Act of 2008 were rescinded.

Seems like Obama is much more culpable for the increase in SNAP than I thought.

*The reason why I chose FY2010 is because that is the first fiscal year in which Obama was the president throughout.

One of the main selling points that Obamacare proponents used was that kids could stay on their parent's health insurance plan until they were 26. Remeber this rhetoric?  As with all things Democrat, the rhetoric never matches up to realtiy. The language they use is very deceiving.

In this case, Democrats use such words and phrases as "able to stay," "can stay," and "could stay." These words all imply that it is voluntary. Kids can stay on their parents plan if they want to and parents can keep them on their plan if they want to. But this isn't what Obamacare does. What they should say is that parents cannot drop them until they cross the age threshold of 26. There is a difference here and a very important one at that. 

Now a story: My brother became a city police officer several months ago. Before he became an officer, he was covered under my parents' policy. Once he became an cop, his health insurance plan was provided by the city in which he was employed. So now what happens to his coverage under my parents' plan? Well, logic would say that since he is covered by his employer, my parents would no longer have to have him on their plan right? Wrong. My parents' insurer said that because of Obamacare, they could not take him off their plan because he is under 26 EVEN THOUGH he is covered by his employer. So my parents are now forced to pay for a child's health insurance when that child is covered by his employer's plan!

I haven't heard about this happening before. I assumed that once a child receives health insurance elsewhere, they could be dropped from their parents' plan but apparently not. Pelosi was right. We are finding more and more out about the bill after it is passed.

How nice.